warriors of the East and their kings, caliphs, emirs, and emperors; but since, in this same passage of the Manuscript, we find mention of another legendary practice for which there is actually a good amount of reliable evidence — the cooking of meat between the legs of Eastern riders and their horses’ backs — we cannot agree with Gibbon’s skepticism too quickly, simply to obey the imperatives of political correctness or a more basic revulsion at the very idea. Certainly, for instance, the great Turkic Emir Timur (or “Timur the Lame,” often contracted, variously, to Tamerlane or Tamburlaine, A.D. 1336–1405) had his own spies disseminate rumors of “mountains” built of tens of thousands of skulls among populations he hoped to conquer, as a way to weaken resistance and sow panic, a trick practiced more than two centuries earlier by Genghis Khan; and in both cases, we have reliable accounts to prove that these men at least sometimes made good on their threats — as they must have done, in order to be sure that the threats themselves carried weight. “Mountains” is doubtless an exaggeration; but a pile of human skulls numbering in the tens of thousands must surely have seemed a mountain, to horrified onlookers. —C.C.
† Allsveter and ‡ Wodenez Two of the most common terms used to describe the deity whom Gibbon has already and correctly (but not adequately) termed “the patriarch of the Norse gods,” Odin (also known, as in Richard Wagner’s operatic cycle, Der Ring des Nibelungen, as Wotan). He had even more obscure names, among the Germanic tribes, since their adherence to this faith (again, contrary to much popular and even some scholarly opinion) predated the arrival of the Norse invaders, perhaps and importantly explaining the German people’s consistent fascination with the myths. For the purposes of these examples, however, Allsveter is almost certainly the Broken dialectal term meaning “All- father,” or “Father of all,” a concept that, we should note, is not, in any of its variations, synonymous with “all- powerful” or “supreme being,” as in the Christian sense of God: Wotan, like all the other great polytheistic patriarchs, had challengers, mistresses, and weaknesses; could suffer defeats; endured not only self-doubt, but regrets; and enjoyed the distinction of having been the only pagan patriarch to endure facial disfigurement, when he traded one of his eyes for Wisdom. —C.C.
†† “‘… the runes …’” Evidently, Gisa taught Isadora not only the practices of a skilled healer, but other talents, as well, talents that, under the old, traditional faith of Broken, would have gone hand in hand with healing: those of a seeress, a woman (and such divining figures were almost universally women, among the Germanic tribes) who could cast runes — anything from collections of bones and sticks to chosen stones carved with runic symbols — and gain, not specific details of the future, but an idea of general trends, most importantly for her tribe. —C.C.
† “… the family’s modest litter …” Gibbon writes, “Although this was doubtless another of Oxmontrot’s attempts to ape Roman customs, it also served, as so many of his policies did, a secondary and pragmatic purpose: Romans rode litters borne by slaves, as opposed to horses, as both a mark of status and as a method of limiting the amount of horse dung and urine that cluttered their already narrow and foul streets. The imperative for the second of these purposes in a city of stone, built upon the summit of a lone mountain some three and a half thousand feet in elevation, would have been even greater.”
† Selke and Egenrich Although evidently inscrutable in Gibbon’s day, the names of Keera’s and Veloc’s parents can now be traced more certainly: Selke—like Elke, in Frisian, from which the name was derived — is apparently a Broken “pet name” for the Germanic Adelheid (or Sedelheid, in the Broken dialect), the usual meaning of which is “kind and noble.” But in the Broken version, “noble because kind” would be closer, and the fact that Selke appears to have been a name used only by the Bane reminds us that compassion was a quality found in greater abundance among the exiles in Davon Wood than in Broken. Besides being a virtue, for the Bane, compassion was also good sense — it kept the tribe open to new outcasts, who thus increased their numbers, brought new blood into the breeding pool, and increased the Bane’s strength and good fortune accordingly. Egenrich, meanwhile, is the Broken version of the very common German name Heinrich, by way of the Old High German version, Haganrich, all three of which mean roughly the same thing, “strong ruler.” Thus, the couple together stand for “compassion and strength”: not only the highest of Bane virtues, but an apt description, to judge by their actions, of the role they played in the lives of their two natural children and their one adopted (if wayward) son. —C.C.
THE INTERLUDE † the title “Interlude: A Forest Idyll” It is unclear whether Gibbon detected any note of either irony or outright sarcasm in the title of this section of the Manuscript: whatever the case, while the subject matter broadly resembles what we would expect to find in a typical “idyllic” pause between more narrative episodes, and while the central relationship between the two characters introduced in these pages would certainly seem to justify such a label, each of the histories of those characters is so marred by tragedy and violence, the examples of which are so carefully, indeed graphically phrased (and with so little concern for the elements of poetics or aesthetics), that it seems probable that the narrator, rather than attempting a true idyll, is attempting an earnest — indeed, a grim — broadside against some of the most fatuous popular misconceptions and literary foibles of his time. —C.C.
† “… the forces of revolutionary destruction …” Gibbon refers to the growing Romantic movement, and particularly to that school most obviously represented by the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778), whose theories centered on the Natural World, the “Social Contract,” and what is perhaps unjustly dismissed as the theory of the “Noble Savage.” Rousseau’s views on social and societal relationships among humans were indeed twisted and prostituted to the cause of excessive, unchecked violence during the French Revolution, as well as other unsavory episodes during that period and others to come. The most sensible of Romantics recognized the limitations of the philosophy, to say nothing of its dangers, during the French Reign of Terror; but many held on to the ideas tenaciously, rationalizing brutal behavior among human societies that any animal species would certainly have disdained. —C.C.
† neura Gibbon writes, “This is, of course, a term taken from Greek antiquity, one originally employed by [the fourth century B.C.] physician Praxagoras of Cos to describe what he thought were a special set of arteries that transmitted the ‘vital force,’ or ‘divine fire’ which all progressive Greek medical minds called pneuma, an invisible substance in the air that is inhaled and traveled from the lungs to the heart, vitalizing the blood that was to be sent to the various appendages and organs of the body, making function and animation possible. However, Praxagoras’s student, Herophilus of Alexandria [335–280 B.C.], building on his teacher’s work yet pushing well beyond it, realized that the neura were in fact not arteries, but instead represented an entirely separate method of transmitting the pneuma. In the modern age, of course, when we have learned through the work of the chemists Lavoisier and Priestley that it is oxygen that in fact fulfills the role assigned to the pneuma, such opinions may seem quaint; but we ought not underestimate their importance as steps along the way to the truth.” One need only add that we ought, too, to recognize that the work of the ancient Greeks is remembered in the name eventually and correctly given to that other “special set of arteries,” the nervous system, or nerves, the adjectival root for which is, of course, neural, and whose basic units of signaling all sensations are neurons using electro-chemical transmission. —C.C.
‡ “the thirl” A term used by various northern tribes — including, apparently, the old man’s unnamed steppe horse people, who were likely from the Ukraine or some other pseudo-European area — in the same sense that we use the word “thrill” today. Indeed, there is an obvious etymological connection between the two, and a behavioral one, as well: the old man’s tribe, like many modern people, actively sought such experiences. —C.C.
† “… the endless steppes …” The background of this character (prior to his becoming a traveling scholar, apparently well known throughout what we today call the Middle East, Europe, North Africa, and even parts of India for his expertise in fields ranging from medicine to warfare) remains obscure, although certain logical conclusions may be reached that are important to the tale, as it contributes to a more comprehensive understanding of the old man’s character and behavior. We can safely rule out any chance that he came from one of those known horse peoples who dominated the critical southern and central regions of the Pontic-Caspian steppe
